Ok so I bought the Japanese maple and its need a trunk chop and maybe a repot. I figured that I could do both because she I want to chop to already has a lot of branches so it wouldn't be to bad. If I can do only one which should I do know. Which the chop , concave cut or convex

Jake16 wrote:Ok so I bought the Japanese maple and its need a trunk chop and maybe a repot. I figured that I could do both because she I want to chop to already has a lot of branches so it wouldn't be to bad. If I can do only one which should I do know. Which the chop , concave cut or convex

neither...cut flat across leaving an inch or 2 for natural die back...you can run into problems chopping maples in spring because they tend to be bleeders...a lot of people prefer to do chops and hard pruning in fall right after leaf fall...with that said, root-pruning helps fight the bleeding, so you could re-pot, root-prune, and trunk chop all at the same time to help balance things out...

Jake16 wrote:Thats perfect thanks for the reply. How do you treat the cut after the natural die back?

the tree will decide...by that i mean you will be able to see the difference in the dead area vs the live...so just go back and cut off the dead area, then clean up the cut by going just barely into the living wood following the line the tree choose...i dont worry too much about convex or concave...since the tree would have already had a chance to alter its sap flow, i just cut along that new path...then i just watch how it heals and go from there...you can always go back and concave or whatever later according to how the scar tissue is forming...some cuts dont need it...i sewar, everytime i have tried to guess what a tree is going to do or do something based on what it "should" do...it ends up doing something else anyway lol...so now i just let it decide for me whenever possible...im sure this isnt the "right" way, and someone may come along and offer better advice...hope that made sense.